


the haunting of litchfield house

by kamisado



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: M/M, au where whelk isnt teaching at aglionby and noah doesn't live w the glendower gang, henry is sad and noah helps him out
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-05
Updated: 2018-08-05
Packaged: 2019-06-22 10:45:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,695
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15580224
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kamisado/pseuds/kamisado
Summary: Henry’s mother had always warned him never to mess around with the dead, but he thought that meant cussing out late relatives he didn’t like, not y’know, the actual dead.[an AU where noah haunts henry and shenanigans ensue]





	the haunting of litchfield house

It had been the same old schtick, all fake Aglionby pride and big smiles.

For what it was worth, Henry usually loved a good Raven Day: pressed khaki pants and glitter paint and running at each other on the school quad. All the creativity of art class with none of the stressful grading system. And of course, a day dedicated to running around pretending to be a bird meant a day without AP Calculus, so it was a clear win-win.

But this one had been different. Three years of Aglionby, and he was beginning to feel deflated by the ceremony of it all. The glassy-eyed smiles, the faculty-enforced shoe-horning into photoshoots for the prospectus so the school could pretend to be diverse. The annual speeches about how they should all be so goddamn _proud_ of themselves. Proud of what, Henry wasn’t sure, but he had a pretty clear inkling with the way he saw Aglionby boys parading around Henrietta like they owned the place.

He’d been face down on his bed in Litchfield House, still in his Raven Day finery complete with silver bird-shaped confetti in his hair, desperately trying not to think about the next day’s return to math and Latin and Ancient Greek when the window above his head swung open.

Spring in Henrietta was generally a forgiving season, so Henry had just rolled over, mumbling a creative stream of curse words when an icy breeze blasted in, almost ripping the window off its hinges and slamming it back against the wall. The iron in the lattice window struck the wall so hard the glass in the diamond-shaped panes rattled _._ Henry awoke with a start, bolt-upright in his bed before he had time to register what was happening. He could count the times the weather had woken him on one hand and the day really had been quite mild. Sunny, even. The wind blew again, a relentless howl this time. The stack of thin paper-back books slid off his desk into crumpled heaps on the floor, loose worksheets spiraled through the air.

Grumbling, he stumbled to his feet, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. The window shut easily under his hands, and he pressed the latch down firmly to make sure it stayed in place. It would have been all too easy to go back to bed, fall back into a peaceful dreamless sleep. But the wind had left a chill in the room, and as Henry wrapped his arms around himself, he shivered beneath the thin navy sweater with the Aglionby crest.

 _Don’t be stupid, Henry,_ he told himself, shaking his head as if to dispel any thoughts from his mind. He stripped off his uniform in favor of a pair of pajamas decorated with comic book explosions and clambered back into bed, leaving the detritus in his room for his future self to deal with and forced himself to think nothing of it. The breeze had left as suddenly as it had arrived, and a cursory glance out into the night showed, that the trees in the yard were still. The night sky was crisp, cloudless, moonlight catching between the trees.

But as he fell back asleep, he swore he could hear a distant rattle. _It’s the wind. Or one of my housemates creeping around._ And he tried desperately not to think about how _old_ the house was, the secrets beneath the floorboards, the _things_ the walls had seen. As a freshman, the place used to freak him out, but that was a long time ago now, right?

And just on the brink of sleep, Henry swore he knew what it was. The rattle drifted through the cool night air, echoing in the winding corridors of Litchfield House. Small wheels, clattering round and round, like a skateboard on concrete.

 

* * *

 

For all Henry liked to project that he was in control of his life, he really wished he was more of a morning person. It wasn’t often he envied the Aglionby boys who boarded, with their lumpy beds and poorly-heated rooms and, ugh, _roommates_? But Henry did envy how they could just roll out of bed and into class if they desired. Henry instead had to put up with a stream of housemates knocking on his door while he tried to summon the energy to open his eyes – first Koh, quiet and polite, the knock so timid Henry could easily pretend he didn’t hear. Then Ryang would burst his way in, lecturing Henry in the most motherly way he could muster about the importance of a good education.  That usually did provoked pillow throwing and cussing but it usually did the trick. But some days when he was feeling particularly shitty, Cheng2 would get summoned.

The shock of the ice-water was almost as bad as knowing Cheng2 had his shit together more than he did.

And to add insult to injury, Latin was almost always first period. Henry loathed the class with a burning passion. For someone who occasionally struggled to wrap his head around the bullshit sounds of English, learning a dead language with ridiculous grammar was _hard,_ and that was without his stomach threatening to consume itself in the process. Henry had long since learned that breakfast was a luxury for people who got out of bed at a sensible time and Latin was for kids who had too much time on their hands. But as he fiddled with the buckle on his satchel, he noticed a shiny wrapped rectangle tucked on top of the notebooks.  It took Henry a second to process what it was, and then several more to figure out where it had come from. It was a cereal bar. His favorite kind too, the one with all the nuts and bits of chocolate in. _Probably Koh. Maybe Ryang if he’s feeling kind._

But then when it happened again the following Monday, and then the Thursday when he ‘accidentally’ overslept for the math pop quiz, Henry figured he really ought to try and figure it out. Koh was the obvious suspect, quiet and kind, always sneaking around Litchfield House in the dead of night. Did he sleep? Who knows. Did he ever do his dishes? Not in two years of living together. But what Henry _did_ know was that this was absolutely the sort of thing he would do, always creeping around, keeping an eye out for his fellow housemates.

“Dude, keep that away from me,” Koh said that night, as Henry cornered him at the dinner table. Koh pulled one headphone out lethargically as he stared over at Henry brandishing a cereal bar. “You know that shit could kill me.” Henry furrowed his brow but put the cereal bar away. Several moments of confused silence elapsed before Koh rolled his eyes, not unkindly.

“ _Oh_ , the peanut allergy.” _C’mon Henry,_ he couldn’t help thinking to himself. He’d been so caught up in the sudden appearance of his favorite breakfast snack, he’d forgotten why he couldn’t have them around anymore.

“ _Yeah,_ no shit buddy _,_ ” Koh replied, an eyebrow raised. Henry slumped onto his elbows on the table and stared up at Koh miserably. “Are you alright?” Henry thought of the mountain of work he still had to tackle for the next day, and how much brainpower he was wasting thinking about a cereal bar. He looked up at Koh melodramatically, with baleful eyes.

“Is it still a sophomore slump if you’re a junior?”

 

* * *

 

Ryang was less easy to corner, but a still pretty obvious choice. Captain of the Aglionby ice hockey team without even being a senior, he spent most of his life giving faux-inspirational speeches and pretending to be a hard-ass. The only time Ryang was ever free was in the early morning, when the birds screamed into the darkness of not-quite-dawn. Henry braced himself against the sound of frozen fruit in the blender as he stumbled into the kitchen bleary-eyed.

“Hey! Ryang!” Henry waved over at his housemate to get his attention over the tremendous crunching noises. “Is it you that keeps putting these in my bag every time I miss breakfast?” He had to yell to be heard over the blender noise, and he regretted every life decision that had led to him being awake at 6am interrogating his housemate over a cereal bar.

Ryang stopped the blender to add a sachet of vanilla protein power and stirred it in with a spoon. The clank of the spoon against the blender blades set Henry’s teeth on edge.

“Hm?” He peered over at the cereal bar in Henry’s hand. “Bro, that is no breakfast. If I was gonna make you breakfast, I’d make sure at least three food groups were covered.” He poured the smoothie into a huge glass that had originally began life as a vase. “That shit is good for nobody, the amount of pure sugar in it.” The vaguely green color and lumpy texture of the liquid made Henry look away as Ryang chugged it down. “Plus, you’d better eat that before you kill Koh.”

Henry rolled his eyes and slumped off back to bed, frustrated and more than a little nauseous.

 

* * *

 

So if it wasn’t Koh, and it wasn’t Ryang, that only left one suspect. Henry suddenly felt uneasy at the prospect, and not for the first time wondered if the cereal bars had been doctored in some way.

“Hey, Mr Brooooooooadway,” Henry sang in announcement, peering his head round Cheng2’s doorway. The room was filthy with unwashed laundry and empty beer cans and loose tobacco, not to mention the godforsaken _smell_ of the place. Cheng2 sat up on his elbows on the bed and caught the hacky sack he’d been tossing up and down.

“Cheng1, buddy, I’ve told you before, I don’t think it counts as a nickname if it’s, like, my actual name,” he replied, with a half-smile.

“It’s all in the delivery,” Henry shot back, wandering in and straddling the wheelie desk-chair. “Yo, can I ask you a question?” Cheng2 smirked and raised an eyebrow.

“No, not like that.” Henry shook his head, flailing out an arm to whack his lecherous housemate, and pulling out the now-very-battered cereal bar from his back pocket. “Is it you who keeps putting these in my bag in the mornings?”

The honk of laughter that erupted from Cheng2’s mouth sounded inhuman. Henry regretted coming in here in the first place – Cheng2’s room was always a last resort in terms of hangout locations – but he was hellbent on figuring out what was going on here. Cheng2 loved pranks, but never the kind where you ended up being actually _nice_ to someone.

Cheng2 punted the hacky sack across the room and flopped back on his bed with a grin.

“Sorry bud,” he said, tossing the cereal bar from hand to hand. “I can take this off your hands if you like though.” His eyes lit up like a kid at Christmas. Henry rolled his eyes and span round in a circle on the chair. By the time he faced Cheng2 again, he’d scarfed down the whole thing.

He was beginning to feel a bit ridiculous. He’d thought this was just his housemates just being nice, if a bit out of character, but this had turned into a whole mystery quest now, and he was determined to get to the bottom of it.

 

* * *

 

As the semester stretched on, Henry began to realize it wasn’t just the cereal bars. They only appeared when he’d forgotten breakfast, and he still couldn’t find out where they’d come from. But now, the milk was always in the fridge, not rotting on the counter – Henry’s self-confessed worst habit – and whenever he was particularly overwhelmed with how many filthy dishes were in the kitchen, by the next morning they were all done.

Three years of living with the Vancouver crowd had taught him that if he wanted anything doing, he had to do it himself, considering how all four of them somehow managed to run on completely different schedules. This was a new, and quite frankly not altogether unwelcome development.

And Henry knew he should have been willing to attribute this new-found kind behavior to his housemates, or at least the one of whom who had managed to get their shit together enough to help a guy out.

Truth be told, he knew Aglionby was wearing him down. Their whole ‘anything less than a B is a fail’ attitude, punctuated by angry phone calls from his mother, filled him with constant waves of icy dread that crashed over him out of nowhere. His siblings were CEOs and specialists, successful in every field he could think of. But Henry wanted something more. Robobee was testament to that, dancing around his head and nestling in his hair. Aglionby was just so _stifling_ with its rules and uniform and the weight of history and tradition pressing down on them at all times, but Robobee was special. The flutter of glee in his chest whenever he saw that tiny insect circle overhead was the one thing he clung to in the throes of academic despair.

By the time mid-terms rolled around, all thoughts of cereal bars had been thoroughly relegated to the back of his mind. Henry had been scouring the entire works of Ovid looking for a specific line to translate for class, that classic Sunday night _I definitely had all week to do this_ malaise washing over him. The tome was huge, the pages Bible-paper thin. He’d spent a good hour trying to find the passage, squinting at the tiny text to the point where his eyes had begun to water. He’d slammed the book closed dramatically, thrown his head down onto folded arms, and contemplated whether 7pm was too early to call it a night and go play Halo. The bulb in the desk lamp by his head flickered gently, a silent omen to call it quits.

But when he lifted his head in one final act of perseverance, the pages of the book began to flutter, as if it were being flicked through by a careless invisible hand. Henry froze in place, watching as the book was eventually folded open at page 153, the exact line he needed staring right at him. He sat back in his chair incredulously, gazing blankly at the stark black-on-white of the text in front of him. That couldn’t have been his housemates. He glanced over at the window, which sat resolutely closed. Not the wind either then.

That left only one possible explanation. He was being haunted.  

The thought didn’t scare him as much as he thought it would.

 

* * *

 

“You should get a Ouija board, dude,” Ryang said, straddling the kitchen chair, another lumpy protein shake in hand. Henry had to admire how tough he looked, white Aglionby tee straining against his biceps, but wasn’t overly enamored with the whole idea. Ryang might have been strong but this was the _supernatural_ they were talking about. Henry’s mother had always warned him never to mess around with the dead, but he thought that meant cussing out late relatives he didn’t like, not y’know, the actual _dead._

“Yeah, but like what if it’s evil? I’m too young and beautiful to be haunted for the rest of my life,” Henry replied, fingers laced behind his head with a faux sense of calm. “What if I get cursed? He’s acting all nice to me now and then _boom_ , I’m his spirit-bitch for eternity.” He tried to keep his tone light but the fear was still there. He’d thought about mentioning the mysterious boy in the Aglionby uniform, but his housemates already thought he was being weird enough without actually _seeing_ things too. Ryang spluttered into his shake.

“A ghost who gives you cereal bars and tidies up your shit is evil? Man, I wouldn’t mind the walls bleeding every once in a while if it meant I had my life together for once.”  Henry smirked but he still wasn’t sold. _Are you here right now? Can you hear us talking about you?_

“Tell you what, I’m pretty sure Logan has one. I’ll get him to swing round tonight after practice and we can have a little chat about getting my chores round here done.”

 

* * *

 

The séance, for all intents and purposes, was a giant flop. Ryang brought Logan and his Ouija board, Koh brought hot cocoa and a concerned frown, and Cheng2 brought SickSteve for moral and emotional support. They dimmed the lights, gathered the electric candles from the windowsills throughout the house and each placed a finger on the planchette.

“Is this… a kid’s toy?” Henry asked, looking up at Logan, who shrugged. Logan was a man of extremely few words, and Henry usually respected that a lot. “Cus the arrow pointer bit is a sparkly pink heart, and in between YES and NO it says CALL ME. Like I’m not sure I want Satan booty-calling me at 3am. And, like, I’m not sure eight year olds should be summoning the dead-.” He cut himself off.

Logan stared at him impassively. “It’s my sister’s.” Everyone stared back in silence.

“Okay, okay, now we’ve got all that out of the way,” Cheng2 said, waving his hands around to break the tension. He tipped his head back to the ceiling. “Is there… any spirit with us tonight?” He sounded far too dramatic for the Litchfield living room, with its glass-and-chrome coffee table they all knelt around. The shitty piece of plastic didn’t move. SickSteve tried to wiggle the planchette under his finger for dramatic effect, and Koh elbowed him viciously in the ribs, barely-hidden panic in his eyes.

“Henry, you ask.” Ryang turned to Henry, his features eerie in the low lighting. So Henry asked. He asked every permutation of ‘who is the ghost of Litchfield House?’ he could possibly think of. And just as he was about to give up entirely and throw the whole thing in the trash, the lights blew.

The screaming was heard from many miles away. At least one local farmer dialed 911.

“My bad,” Mrs Woo shouted up the stairs, after way too long had elapsed. “I got it.”

“Oh my god, I’ve told her to stop buying electrical shit off eBay,” Ryang said, head-butting Logan’s shoulder. “She just doesn’t listen.” Koh fished for his keys and turned on a tiny LED torch. The electric candles flickered miserably, barely lighting anything at all.

“Fuck, is that smoke?” Henry shrieked, diving for Ryang who in turn dove for Logan. Sure as anything, plumes of smoke danced overhead in the blue-white beam of light. Koh waved his torch about frantically, trying to find the source. Henry had never seen his friends so afraid, and he could feel his heartbeat racing in his ears. _Is it you? Are you here?_

_Are you angry with us?_

“Wait a second,” Cheng2 shouted, clutching for Koh’s torch hand. “What the fuck kinda smoke smells like apples?” He pointed the torch into the corner of the room where SickSteve sat sprawled across the couch, vaping nonchalantly. As the beam of light passed over his face, he burst into laughter.

“Your faces were. Just. Incredible. I thought I’d provide some mood-,” he snorted, before shrieking as Cheng2 flopped onto him.

“What the _fuck,_ _Steven?”_ Ryang shouted from somewhere behind Logan.

“This is why nobody likes you, Steve,” Koh scowled, as the lights overhead burst into life again. The Ouija board sat in the middle of the coffee table, planchette now firmly in the middle.

“I see my life is, and continues to be, a total joke.” Henry tipped back in his chair, staring at the pink plastic heart. He couldn’t help but feel more than a little disappointed.

 

* * *

 

Exam season hit them all like a freight train.

Of course, on a steady diet of Cheetos, Mountain Dew and the odd packet of Lifesavers – _they’re basically fruit though,_ he’d tried telling himself _–_ Henry got sick. It wasn’t even the typical winter coughing and sneezing that made people loathe to sit next to you in class, this was the full-on cold sweats and throwing up variety of flu. Cheng2 was unsurprisingly completely useless when it came to looking after the sick; the only vaguely medicinal thing he could offer was a pot brownie.

Koh was surprisingly more helpful however. He stumbled in, arms laden with a stack of warm blankets and the promise of chicken soup to follow. Henry couldn’t help but blanch at the thought of food, but he was glad someone was keeping an eye on him.

He wondered about the ghost. Over the past few days, he and Ryang had been thinking up monikers, ranging from the Litchfield Lacerator to the Vancouver Eviscerator to the Henrietta Homicider. The last one Henry was sure wasn’t a real word, but Ryang was so into it, he couldn’t complain.

Henry hated being sick. It wasn’t that he missed class; he loved a good sick day, but not when he was so sick he couldn’t even stand. The room seemed to tilt whenever he even approached a sitting position and even coherent thought was a struggle. Eventually, Koh and Ryang and even Cheng2 hauled themselves to class, leaving Henry to fend from himself, with the odd hostile check from Mrs Woo.

The day passed in a hazy blur, his mind too foggy to play even the most straightforward of video games, but every time Henry kicked off the blankets in his sleep, or drained the glass next to his bed, he awoke tucked in tight with a full glass of water by his head. At the time, Henry thought nothing of it, but days later, sat in the middle of his AP Calculus exam, Henry tried to piece it together. Mrs Woo rarely wanted anything to do with Cheng2’s annoying friends she happened to live with, and Henry strongly suspected it wasn’t her doing. Chewing on his pencil, he thought hard about that day.

He'd been huddled in his bed, duvet feverishly pushed to one side when a cold breeze slammed the window pane open. In his sick stupor, he felt a strange rush of déjà vu, but put it down to the vast amount of cough medicine rushing through his body. And that’s when he remembered. An icy cold hand pressed to his forehead forced him to open his eyes, squinting up at the figure tending to him. It was a boy in an Aglionby uniform.

 _How could I have forgotten this?_ He thought with frustration, glaring at the frantic scribbles on his exam paper.

The boy was disheveled like Koh, and broad like Ryang, but with a messy shock of blond hair, all tangled over his eyes. Henry didn’t get a good look at his face, or maybe he just couldn’t get his vision to focus for more than a second but Henry knew this was the person who’d been looking after him while the others were at school.  It could have been any of his housemates, but somehow Henry knew that it wasn’t.

The figure was in a uniform just like theirs. If it was a ghost, then it couldn’t have been that much older than them.

The thought made Henry swallow uncomfortably.

 

* * *

 

“You keep it,” Logan said after their heartrates had returned back to normal, after that séance so many weeks ago, thrusting the box into Henry’s arms. “Do what you want with it.” 

And that’s how the Ouija board ended up propped against the wall in Henry’s room, generally ignored as time passed. Henry was beginning to worry that he’d offended whatever helpful spirit that had been inhabiting Litchfield House, or worse, that the ghost had never existed and he was just losing his mind. But in the dead of night, the window swung open, jolting Henry awake, just as it had in the beginning. It had felt like years since he’d first been haunted, but it had really only been a couple of months.

“Are you there?” Henry asked, rubbing his eyes, feeling a little silly. An icy breeze swept through the room and knocked the Ouija board box over. “Nice,” he said, clambering out of bed to pick up the box. “A bit on the nose though, don’t you think?” Henry tried to force the waver out of his voice; _he just wants to help you, doesn’t he? Does he?_ The lamp next to the bed flared into life, illuminating the bedspread just enough for Henry to see the ornate letters on the tattered box.

“Okay, okay, cool it Caspar, let’s be grown-ups about this _,”_ Henry muttered as he set up the board. The room felt chilly, tense. He set the planchette in the middle of the board and placed his fingers on it. He felt a little stupid, but the feeling was elapsed by a kind of fizzy excitement in his stomach.

“Is there a spirit here in this room?” His voice came out a strangled whisper. Part of him expected nothing to happen. Part of him expected to wake up and this all have been a weird fever-dream.

But then the planchette slid over to _YES_. Henry nearly snatched his hands off the board, but he didn’t know what the hell he was doing and the fear of accidentally summoning Satan or something was beginning to make him sweat. He slid the planchette back into the middle with trembling fingers.

“Is this the ghost, uh, I mean, spirit, who’s been hanging around Litchfield House with me?” Henry’s voice was barely audible, and he was about to ask again when the sliver of plastic beneath his hands slid over to _YES_ again. He felt like he could fall back into his bed with relief, although he wasn’t quite sure why. _I mean, it’s not Satan, at least, I don’t think so, but there’s still an honest to god ghost in here,_ he thought frantically.

“What’s your name?” The planchette moved from _YES_ to the letter _N._ Then _O._ For a sickening second, Henry thought the ghost was refusing to share its name and he was suddenly very sure he was about to get cursed for life. But then it slid onto the _A._ It took a few more seconds for the name to be spelled out in full.

_NOAH CZERNY._

At that, Henry did leap back, the planchette sliding out of his grip and onto the duvet. Quickly, he realized his mistake and moved it back onto the board, the plastic pressed resolutely to the flimsy cardboard.

“Noah Czerny, like Raven Day Noah Czerny?” For a solid minute the planchette didn’t move, and Henry was terrified that he’d broken the connection, that Noah had gone for good. But then it slid back over to _YES._ Henry could feel his hands trembling on the plastic; he wasn’t sure he’d ever get used to the idea that someone else was moving his hands like that. “Oh my God, that’s so cool, Raven Day is the freaking _best_.”

Reservations aside, Raven Day was usually by far Henry’s favorite Aglionby holiday. But a horrible thought began to dawn on him.

“Wait.” He moved the planchette back to the middle. “You’re talking to me through a Ouija board.” _Shit,_ he thought, his heart sinking. “So, you’re dead?” The last part was barely a whisper, and Noah took only seconds to think before the planchette shifted over to _YES._

Henry felt sick. He’d thought this was just solving the question of who’d been watching his back, but now he was unveiling a tragedy. He wanted to ask Noah all sorts of questions about what had happened, and who he really was, but the whole thing felt grossly inappropriate though single letters on a board. Noah wasn’t a malevolent spirit, an object for their enjoyment. He was just a boy.

“Can-?” Henry wasn’t sure if he wanted to finish the sentence, but he knew he ought to ask anyway. “Can I see you?” Dead or not, Noah had had his back this last few months and he wasn’t sure he would have finished the year without him. He stared fixedly at the board, waiting for the plastic to slide over to _YES_ or _NO._ After a good solid minute, nothing happened, and Henry sighed sadly as he sat back on his bed. He closed his eyes, running through the events of the last five minutes in his mind, trying to rationalize them and failing every time.

And when he opened them again, he saw Noah.

There was the boy from earlier, short and stocky and blond. He stood at the end of Henry’s bed, rumpled and dirty and more than a little insubstantial, but Henry could see his crooked smile, the way he ran his hand through his floppy hair awkwardly.

“Hi.”

“Oh my god,” Henry whispered, afraid to even move. “You’re- You’re Noah.”  Noah nodded, and smiled almost embarrassedly. Henry wasn’t sure what he’d expected, but he hadn’t expected something, some _one_ so… _human_.

“Can I sit?” Noah asked. Henry nodded mutely, tucking his knees up to his chest. He thought he ought to be more scared than this, at the thought of just summoning someone out of nowhere, but he thought of all the things Noah had done for him over the last couple of months and he forced himself to calm down. Noah perched on the end of the bed, nervously. Henry swore he could see the door right _through_ the kid, but he couldn’t be sure.

There had been so many things that Henry wanted to ask, but none of them seemed appropriate now he was staring Noah in the eye. The main question was _how did you die?_ but Henry wasn’t sure what he wanted as an answer, accident or suicide or-

Now Noah was up close, he could see exactly what it was that killed him. The dark smudge under his eye, the smudge that could have been any bruise or dirt, was a shadow. A hollow where his cheek should have been.

“Oh,” Henry breathed, reaching out a hand towards Noah’s. Now he knew what it was that marred the beautiful Aglionby boy’s face in front of him, he couldn’t look away. His fingers brushed against Noah’s and Noah flinched full-body but didn’t pull his hand away. He was ice-cold but definitely corporeal.

“So you’re the guy who’s been getting me breakfast and helping me with my Latin homework?” Henry aimed for light-hearted, but his voice shot up an octave on the last word and gave him away. Noah smiled wanly. He might have seemed human at first glance, but his quiet passivity made him just so damn _ghostly._

“Yeah, I guess so,” Noah said quietly, looking anywhere apart from at Henry.

“Well, thanks, I guess,” Henry replied sheepishly. He couldn’t take his eyes off Noah’s face, but it was as if the light had changed suddenly as the hollow in his face now looked nothing more than a smudge of dirt.  Noah nodded slowly, clearly trying to think of what to say next. Henry had to admire that about his newfound ghost friend; he chose his words carefully. Noah stared distantly at the window, as Henry fiddled with the planchette, trying to make polite conversation.

“Sorry, I didn’t speak to you earlier,” Noah said sheepishly, just as Henry opened his mouth to speak. The comment took Henry by surprise a little; the ‘séance’ they’d tried to hold suddenly felt like a farce compared to the almost sacred silence between the two of them now. Noah was a boy, but he wasn’t just a boy, he was thought and prayer and _magic_ , and the fact that he felt the need to _apologize_ almost made Henry laugh.

“No worries about it, dude. My friends can be a bit… _much_ sometimes.” Noah turned to him quickly but looked away, the traces of a smirk fading on his lips.

“I’m not good when there’s, uh. Lots of people,” Noah replied, after a minute’s pause, gesturing emptily as he closed his eyes. Henry pressed his lips together in thought, _I know what you mean,_ eyes tracing the broad slope of Noah’s shoulders, the finger-tangled muss of dirty blonde hair. Henry couldn’t tell if it was the cool moonlight glow streaming from the window or his own bleary eyes, but Noah looked as if he were fading.

A thought suddenly struck Henry at the sight of Noah’s hand translucent on the bedspread – _what if this is it, the last time anyone ever gets to speak to him –_ and he felt the words spilling from his mouth before he could even think about what he was saying.

“Noah, who killed you? Maybe I can hel-”

But at the first mention of that word, to _kill_ , Noah’s eyes sprang open, like a terrified creature trapped in a fluorescent beam of light. Before Henry could think of anything to say to make it right again, Noah flickered out of existence.

 

* * *

 

The days passed, and Henry couldn’t shake that sick feeling in his stomach. That night had felt like a strange dream, the boy with the mussed hair and the Aglionby uniform sat inches away from him up in his room. He couldn’t believe he’d been so stupid, _I mean god Henry, you can’t just ask someone who killed them?_

In the end, he decided to confide in Koh. It was a Saturday afternoon, so he knew Ryang would be at the gym with Logan and Cheng2 would be out selling pot to Mountain View kids. And Koh had always been a little, uh, _weird_ , with his moshpit haircut and collection of animal skulls, so Henry figured that maybe Koh was the right call after all.

“Hey, Kohseph.” He snapped his fingers in front of Koh until he pulled out one headphone apathetically. “I’ve got a question for you.” Koh looked endlessly beleaguered as he pushed his PSP to one side.

“What if the séance had worked?” Koh raised an eyebrow, pursing his lips. Henry stared at him intently, trying to convey the seriousness of the situation without seeming crazed.

“What if it had?” Koh asked, suspiciously. Henry nodded solemnly. “It depends if we summoned Casper, or the spawn of Satan.” He was so deadpan that Henry wasn’t sure if he was being sarcastic. Koh had one of those senses of humor that often defied understanding.

“What if I had summoned the ghost that had been haunting me this past few months?” Henry leaned closer. “What if I met him, and what if he was an Aglionby boy like us?” Koh narrowed his eyes, attention now firmly held. “And what if he’d been murdered?”

Koh’s expression was inscrutable. Henry couldn’t tell if he found the questions ridiculous or humorous or altogether quite sincere, and he was about two seconds from getting up and leaving before he was laughed out of the room before Koh said-

“You’re talking about Noah Czerny, right?”

Henry felt himself blanch and nodded. “How-”

“I mean, there’s only one Aglionby kid who’s missing presumed dead.” He tapped a finger against his chin in thought. “Sure, some students probably died due to accidents or suicides or sickness, but there’s only one where it could really have been a murder.” Henry was suddenly very grateful he picked Koh and his morbid curiosity over the rational Ryang or the ramblings of an inebriated Cheng2.

“How do you know all this?” Henry asked, dreading the answer before the words were even out of his mouth. Koh stared at him, head tilted to one side like a curious bird.

“Raven Day never sat right with me,” was what Koh offered in response. Henry knew how he felt, the artifice of it all, even if it was good fun, but he was a little confused by the change of topic. “So I did some research. He founded it.”

Henry furrowed his brow. He knew there was some link between Noah and Raven Day, but he thought it was just their version of Spirit Week, with a memorial tacked on the side. Koh stared impassively, waiting for the cogs to turn in Henry’s mind.

_You founded Raven Day? This was your idea?_

And the school had taken it and twisted it into some kind of money-making enterprise, but of course they did. Henry felt a little swelling of pride at his new-found ghost friend’s endeavor.

“Come with me to the library,” Koh offered, as the dawning realization spread across Henry’s face. “I can show you the life of Noah Czerny.”

 

* * *

 

A sudden unexpected chill awoke Henry in the early hours.

Days and days had passed since he had visited the library with Koh, and he couldn’t think of anything except Noah. Koh had shown him newspaper clippings with yellowing edges and low-res images printed from the Aglionby archives. At first, Noah seemed just like any other Aglionby boy; all academic math prizes and swim medals. But there were clippings from other places, things that Henry didn’t think would have survived. Detention slips for skipping class, skating in the halls. Stacks and stacks and stacks of parking tickets for leaving his car in the teacher’s lot, and sometimes on the front lawn. Little things like that, a life told in snapshots, made Henry feel impossibly sad.  Noah was _someone_ , a real person with his life ahead of him. And someone had taken that all away from him.

_I’m so sorry Noah. I’m so sorry this happened._

He swore he could almost see his breath in front of him it was that cold, but the air had been disgustingly humid all day and it was summer, goddamn. The room was still, not even a light breeze to stir the curtains framing the windows.

Henry rubbed the sleep from his eyes, about to lay back down and sleep, when he saw a figure standing by his desk.

“Noah?”

Sure as life, the moonlight traced the rumpled sullen frame of the boy who used to be Noah Czerny. In the half-light, the hollow in his cheek looked even starker against the skull-like whiteness of his face. Koh’s words about summoning evil sprang to Henry’s mind unbidden and he pushed them away hastily as he turned his bedside lamp on. The sudden glow of warm light that washed over them made Noah look that bit more human, and Henry could tell that the look in his eyes wasn’t malevolence after all but just a weary sadness.

“Hi Henry.” Henry gestured towards an empty spot at the end of his bed, and Noah sat staring out of the window as he had done when they’d first met, as if nothing had happened in the meantime.

“It’s been weird without you around,” Henry said with half a smile, trying to hide how desperate he was to fill the silence before Noah could fade away again. He’d liked having someone around to watch his back, to help him when he was struggling, and he felt compelled to help Noah do the same, even if every time he disappeared might be the last.

 “Sorry about that.” Noah said, head bowed as he fidgeted with his fingers. “I just… This whole thing.” He gestured up and down himself with grubby hands. Henry watched as Noah swallowed hard. “It’s a bit… difficult.” Henry nodded, slowly.

“I know you’ve been reading about me,” Noah continued before Henry could say anything else, turning to meet his eyes. The guilt lathed through Henry like a blade of ice. “Please just let it be.” Henry thought that this scenario would terrify him, the ghost of a boy warning him to stop digging, but instead he just felt desperately sad. “I don’t like being reminded of my…” Noah flickered and Henry couldn’t help but to reach out for him.

“Noah, please don’t go yet, I’m so sorry.” Without thinking, he placed his hand on top of Noah’s. Noah flinched again, but this time took Henry’s hand in his. Icy cold, but corporeal, and for someone who’s been dead for seven years, Noah felt remarkably _real._

“I just wanted to help.” His words sounded pathetic, even to his own ears, but Noah still met his gaze. His eyes shone amber in the lamplight glow. “I just wanted to understand…”

“Henry, I don’t even understand.” Noah’s tone was firm but not unkind. Not for the first time Henry wondered how Noah met his end, how a schoolboy could just _disappear_ and nobody know what had happened to him.

“One day I was out with my best friend. Cutting class, going on adventures, y’know.” Henry thought back to those clippings, to the name _Barrington Whelk_ scrawled on all those detention slips next to Noah’s, to the smiling boy with dark curly hair, arm stretched over Noah’s shoulders in every picture.

“And the next he beat me to death.”

The words were hollow in the empty room, and Henry felt a wave of nausea rush over him. The silence between them was brittle, and Henry held on tightly to Noah’s hand.

_I’m sorry, I’m so, so sorry._

How could Noah possibly trust anyone ever again after that? How could he put his faith in anyone after someone had betrayed him so savagely? Henry tried to keep the thoughts of Noah’s death out of his mind, tried not to picture his dying moments, but he couldn’t keep his eyes off that _hollow_ in his face, the mud in his fingernails. Noah flickered in and out of existence, and Henry felt a swell of anguish rise up in him.

_How could he?_

“Why me?” Henry swallowed past the waver in his voice. “Why did you pick me?”

Henry worried that the abruptness of his question was going to make Noah vanish again, but instead he was rewarded with a smile. It was only a tiny smile, fleeting but genuine, and Henry decided there and then it was worth accidentally summoning a thousand minions of Satan to see him smile again.

“This is gonna sound really stupid.” Noah said, taking his hand away from Henry’s to rub behind the back of his neck. He glanced out the window, as if to steel himself, before locking eyes with Henry. “It’s because you remind me of me. Like, when I was alive.” He sounded so nervous, even through the little half smile he gave, and Henry felt a sudden pang of terrible sadness wash over him, as if he’d been doused in cold water. Henry thought of the photos he’d seen in the newspapers in the library, the wide smiles of the Czernys and how Noah, a force in constant motion, had been a little blurry in every single one, not through death but just through the excitement of being _alive_.

Henry couldn’t find the words to say after that, and was grateful that Noah filled the silence, even though all trace of a smile was gone from his face after that.

“I was different when I was alive,” he said distantly, resuming his statuesque pose of staring out of the window, hands clasped in his lap. He seemed to fade as he spoke, and Henry almost felt afraid to blink for fear that in that time Noah would have vanished again, and this time for good.

“But you’re here now,” Henry said, the words sounding hollow spoken to a boy who was almost transparent in front of him. “You might be different now, but you’re here. And that’s the important thing.” Henry thought of the boy he’d read about in the clippings, skateboarder and prize swimmer and speeding tickets on speeding tickets, and the boy he’d known this past three months. The one who’d brought him cereal bars when he was sick and helped him with his Latin homework and tucked him in when he got the flu. That was the Noah he knew, the one he wanted to learn more about.

“I have an idea.”

 

* * *

 

For a school as fancy as Aglionby, Henry was always surprised by how easy it was to break into their swimming pool. The rest of the building was locked up tight, patrolled by overweight security guards on golfcarts all day and most of the night, but the swimming pool was right on the edge of campus, and they’d prized fancy old windows over the security of the inside.

It only took Henry a few seconds to jimmy the latch and slide through the window. Noah clambered after him, all arms and legs. Henry supposed he could have just disappeared and reappeared inside, but that wasn’t what this evening was about. This was about being _alive_ and that included potentially getting wedged inside a campus window until morning.

“Doesn’t this building have an alarm?” Noah looked around nervously, as Henry took his hand and pulled him down a corridor. Henry turned back to him and smirked.

“The swimmers wanted 24-hour access to come and train but they all got their keys taken off them for coming down here and smoking pot.” Noah smiled faintly, as if he distantly remembered being one of those swimmers. “But they never turned the alarms back on. C’mon, it’s down this way.”

The glass display case had been there for as long as Henry had been at Aglionby, and going by the medals and faded photos at the back, it probably predated people’s fathers at Aglionby too. He could tell from the sudden recognition passing Noah’s face that it had certainly been here seven years ago too.

“Hey, look, there’s my old swim team!” Noah pressed his forehead to the glass front, jabbing his finger at a photo at the back. Henry squinted in at the collection of smiling faces, and spotted Noah’s instantly, hair slicked down to his head, sprawled across the front of the photo without a care in the world. Henry couldn’t quite reconcile the arrogance that Noah was exuding with the quiet glee of the boy next to him, but shook the thought from his mind as they stood pressed shoulder to shoulder.

“And look, nobody’s beaten my record for freestyle! Man, that was a fluke if ever I saw one, but I’ll never forget the look on their faces when I got out, straight up cursing for messing up the first dive and still broke the damn record.” Henry looked briefly at the shiny medal at the back of the cabinet engraved indelibly with Noah’s name, but couldn’t keep his eyes off Noah’s face as he told the story of his 200m win. Noah wasn’t that much taller than he was, and at this distance, Henry could see the smattering of freckles across Noah’s nose and cheeks. His face was so close, if Noah turned to face him now their noses would bump, and Henry suddenly became very aware of where they were touching shoulder to shoulder. Noah was still cold, icy cold even through the navy Aglionby sweater, but Henry felt the prickly heat of a blush climbing up from his neck.

“And look, here are all the photos from Raven Day,” Henry pointed to the other side of the cabinet. He didn’t want to bring things back to Noah’s death, but he figured that this spot on campus was the best place to show the celebration of his life this past seven years. “Every year we take a school photo, and we go mad with the art budget and douse ourselves in glitter and feathers while pretending to look nice for the brochures.” Noah smiled then for real, a gaping wide grin that Henry had only seen in photographs, and it was pointed right at him. He could feel his face burning.

“That’s just what I always wanted.” Noah pointed at every photo taken in the past seven years and asked question on question about Raven Day and Henry’s time at Aglionby and the swim team and the town of Henrietta. Henry felt endless pride swelling up inside towards Noah and Raven Day and his legacy. The school might have turned it into a profit-making exercise, but Henry was determined to put it right again.

Noah only faltered when they got to the tiny bronze plaque, right in the middle, engraved ‘In Memory of Noah Czerny, 1990-2007’ and that’s when Henry decided it was time to move on.

He took Noah’s hand like it was the most natural thing in the world and guided him over to the pool. Henry wasn’t much of a sportsman, but even he had to admit he liked the Aglionby pool with its huge glass roof. Dawn was breaking above them, and Henry hadn’t realized just how long they’d spent together. The light swirled in the pool below in scarlet and gold and Henry couldn’t help but think that this is how he wanted to spend the rest of his summers, dangling his bare feet in the icy waters, the smudges of colors overhead reflected perfectly in the glassy water below. Noah dipped his feet in next to him, mumbling half-heartedly about being colder than the water. The silence stretched between them, but this time it was amicable, and Henry could have sat like that all morning, sat there until the school bell rang and security carried them out of the building, but he found he had something he needed to say.

“Noah?” Noah turned to him inquisitively, and this time Henry was the one who felt like he had to look away. “Even if you were different back then, I still like you now. You’re kind, and you’re funny, and… yeah, I enjoy spending time with you.” He couldn’t stop his face from burning, mentally chastising himself for every word, for bringing this back to Noah’s death instead of the beautiful boy sat next to him, but when he looked back at Noah he was laughing.

“Thank you,” Noah said, kicking water at Henry to lighten the mood, but his words were sincere. “Since we’re trading secrets, I’ll give you one of mine.” The light glanced golden through Noah’s hair, his features finely cut like a marble statue.

“When I told you that I first came to Litchfield because you reminded me of me, that’s the truth. But that’s not the only reason why.” Henry couldn’t help but stare, entranced. “It’s because I like you. Like quite a lot.” This time it was Noah’s turn to look embarrassed, rubbing a hand at the back of his neck, and Henry could swear he saw a blush creeping across Noah’s cheeks.

“Oh thank goodness.” Henry let out a breath he didn’t realize he’d been holding. “I’m so glad you agree, because I’ve been wanting to kiss you ever since we broke in here.”

And as Noah closed the distance between them, Henry swore it didn’t matter that Noah was a ghost, that they were the oddest of odd couples, because when he felt Noah’s lips on his, it was as if the world itself had stopped.

The rosy glow of the rising sun on Noah’s cheeks made him look more alive than even the pictures Henry had seen. Henry swore he could look at Noah for hours, the smudge of freckles across his nose, the way he ducked his chin down when he was shy.

Of course, time had not stopped, and when the bright flash of fluorescent lights overhead signaled the arrival of security, Noah and Henry broke apart and sprinted for the window, shoes in hand, a pair of wet footprints trailing behind them.

“You know, you don’t have to do this,” Henry said with a snorting laugh, interlocking his fingers as a foothold for Noah. “You could just, like, disappear and reappear in Litchfield.” Noah looked down at Henry with a smirk, leaning out of the window, stretching out a hand to pull Henry up. In that moment, Henry realized that even if Noah disappeared, he’d come back. He wasn’t just a ghost who did his dishes from time to time, he was a friend, someone who cared for him and someone who he cared for deeply. He reached for Noah’s hand.

“Henry, I wouldn’t change this for the world.”

 

**Author's Note:**

> find me on tumblr [here](https://indigoecho.tumblr.com/)!


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